Parasitic SEO (piggyback SEO, authority jacking) is a SEO technique in which a third party publishes its content on a highly authoritative website with the intention of using the authority of that site to generate traffic to its content.

Content for parasites SEO is usually published on high-authority websites and large news portals, especially those owned by traditional media companies. Such content technically constitutes a sponsored article, although this may not be clearly marked.

Even when marked as sponsored content, the label can be placed in an inconspicuous place that visitors can easily overlook. For this reason, visitors can replace parasites with SEO content for regular content published by the site itself.

For example, the parasitic SEO content below is marked as ‘Paid Advertising’. However, the text is placed in an inconspicuous place which makes it easy to overlook. The text size is smaller, and the color is less pronounced than the rest of the text on the page.

Content published as a parasitic SEO campaign usually has very little editorial oversight by the site publishing the article. Sometimes the content is not even related to the type of content that is otherwise posted on that site. Thus, it is not uncommon for a medical site to post content related to an online casino from a third party.

Parasitic SEO – Benefits

Parasite SEO mainly used by the original author of the article. The site that publishes the article usually receives financial compensation in exchange for the publication of the content.

1. Content is easily ranked

Parasite SEO allows bloggers to rank for highly competitive keywords for which they would not otherwise be able to rank.

The ability to rank content published via the SEO parasite depends on the page on which the content was published. If the site already has high positions for similar keywords, it is more likely to rank well for the keyword the blogger is targeting.

2. Content reaches a wider audience

Parasite SEO allows bloggers and marketing professionals to promote content to a wider audience than they would otherwise have access to. This works because the whole point of the SEO parasite is to publish content on pages that already have traffic and visibility on search engines.

Parasitic SEO – Shortcomings

Parasite SEO has certain consequences for authors who post such content. While this may not be obvious in the short term, it is likely to become a problem in the long run.

1. The author's page remains unknown.

Since visitors do not usually know that the article was published by a third party, they assume that the page on which it was published is also the original publisher. This gives the original author very little visibility of the brand because no one recognizes it.

Even backlinks from other pages will usually lead to the publisher's page, not to the author's page. As a result, the author's page remains less known and receives fewer mentions and lower rankings than it would have if the content had been posted on the author's page.

2. The author has no control over the content

The author has less control over the articles published as part of the SEO campaign parasite. This means that the author cannot arbitrarily update the article. The blogger may also have very little control over how the publisher manages the content after publication.

For example, a publisher may choose to delete content or remove it from the Internet, even against the agreement of the author. The publisher's site may also change existing rules or introduce new ones, which may affect the content.

Relationship between SEO parasite and black hat SEO

Many bloggers consider parasite SEO a form of black hat SEO technique. However, this is not always the case as it can also be white hat or grey hat, depending on the SEO methods used. Some bloggers even distinguish between the two terms and use the term ‘barnacle SEO’ to parasite SEO that uses white hat SEO techniques.

However, parasite SEO is often considered a black hat SEO technique due to the way bloggers and marketing experts approach it. Many authors are only interested in short-term benefits, so they find a page that will publish their content and take advantage as long as possible before moving to the next page.

Google has nevertheless launched a ‘site reputation abuse update’ to deal with pages that parasite SEO content. Google has stated that the update will affect pages that post third-party content with the aim of exploiting their positions in search results.

Google also added that it has methods to identify third-party content that violates their guidelines. They also stated that they have systems for identifying parts of websites that contain content completely different from the content published on the main page.

Google is May 5, 2024. started to introduce a part of the update related to manual actions as part of the ‘site reputation abuse’ update. This has affected a number of major sites, including well-known international news agencies, resulting in the removal of entire subdomains and subdirections from the Google Index.